Portia (given name)
 | |
| Gender | Female |
|---|---|
| Language(s) | Latin |
| Origin | |
| Meaning | Pig |
Portia is a feminine given name taken from the name of the Roman Porcia gens, which was ultimately derived from the Latin porcus, or pig. It is best known as a character who disguises herself as a man to act as a lawyer and save the life of the defendant in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. Porsha is a modern spelling variant.[1]
Women
- Portia (wife of Brutus) or Porcia, the wife of Roman senator Marcus Junius Brutus
- Portia Arthur (born 1990), Ghanaian author, writer and reporter
- Portia Dawson, American actress
- Portia de Rossi or Portia DeGeneres, Australian-born actress
- Portia Doubleday, American actress
- Portia Geach (1873–1959), Australian artist and feminist
- Portia Holman (1903–1983), Australian child psychiatrist
- Portia Mansfield (1887–1979), American dance educator and choreographer
- Portia Robinson (1926–2023), Australian historian
- Portia Holmes Shields, American academic administrator
- Portia Simpson-Miller, political leader of Jamaica's People's National Party and Prime Minister of Jamaica
- Portia White, Canadian singer
- Portia Zvavahera (born 1985), Zimbabwean painter
Pen name
- Portia, pen name of Abigail Adams (1744–1818)
- Portia, pen name of Grizelda Elizabeth Cottnam Tonge (1803–1825)
Fictional
- Portia (The Merchant of Venice), a character in William Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice
- Portia Quayne, the protagonist in The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
- Portia Gibbons, a character on The Mighty B!
- Portia, a minor character in The Hunger Games
- Portia Copeland, a character in Carson McCullers' novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
- Portia Blake, the lead character in the American radio and television soap opera Portia Faces Life
- Portia, a spider protagonist in Children of Time, a novel by Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Portia, Door's mother in Neverwhere, a novel by Neil Gaiman
- Portia Featherington, the matriarch of the Featherington family in the Bridgerton novels and Netflix adaptation.
Notes
- ^ Hanks, Patrick; Hardcastle, Kate; Hodges, Flavia (2006). Oxford Dictionary of First Names. Oxford University Press. p. 60. ISBN 0-19-861060-2.
This page or section lists people that share the same given name.
If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change that link to point directly to the intended article.
If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change that link to point directly to the intended article.